17 comments:

The timeline is important, but doesn't change my opinion. Without regard to whether he was found guilty, this girl should not have to cheer for the cad. Even if the grand jury declined to indict. Failure to indict isn't a statement that she wasn't assaulted.

These days the usual remedy applied in public schools when A attacks B is to expel both A and B for....causing discipline headaches for the "Professional Educators". I bet that same attitude is what is underneath the hard to understand series of events here.

Anyone who can read of this case and not make invidious comparisons to the Duke case deserves some kind of NAACP award.....I can understand the reasoning but not the conclusion. If the races were reversed, perhaps the same conclusion would have been reached, but the response to that ruling would not be so muted.

If your family is going to get charged $45,000, doesn't that give you the cheerleader an incentive to, say, kill the guy you're mad at? I mean, that's a couple of years' salary at least. No way your family is going to be able to pay that off, unless they're rich.

Say it wasn't even a rape case, and it had just been a girl refusing to cheer for an ex-boyfriend with whom she was angry, does the school need to get involved? Why wouldn't adults just ignore that unless it became a chronic problem on the squad?

The fact that it was over an alleged rape makes the school's insistence totally unreasonable.

Yeah. My first reaction was "this is just nuts!". But after reading the details, I don't have much of a problem with it. It would have been better to either talk to the cheer coach and get the night off, or simply call in sick. I mean, if your going to not cheer for every rapist, racist, or criminal in sports, then you wouldn't have cheer leaders.... Hmmmm...

PS. I'm a musician (I use that word in the loosest of terms), and one of my favorite all-time band names that I've never had a chance to use is Cheerleader Deathsquad!

I still don't see how the school officials let it go to the point of expelling the cheerleader from the squad. All they had to do is let it be. Seems like they were determined to make her comply.

This reminds me, for whatever reason, of a spy case from WWII. British intelligence was running a very complex--and successful--deception operation against the Nazis. One of the 'assets' was a rather socially awkard woman, who really, really loved her dog. She had had to leave her dog in Portugal, but wanted it back. Her handler was adamant that her dog had to stay six months in quarantine, complying with British regulations.... In short... the refusal to smuggle the dog almost blew up the whole operation, which may have cost thousands of lives.

Seriously, sometimes it is better to let people have what they want. Getting your way all the time is not worth it.